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Ornamental Grasses

RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening -  760 pages (2007) A wonderfully comprehensive reference guide for the beginner and expert. If you only buy one gardening book it has to be this one.

Grasses have been among the trendiest plants to have in the garden in recent years. Fashion aside, there are plenty of reasons to have them in your garden

• Grasses have a subtle beauty, their flowers are wind-pollinated and therefore not bright and showy, but feathery and delicate and usually very much in keeping with the rest of the plant rather than being a brightly coloured button of a flower stuck on leaves of a totally different shape.

• Grasses animate the garden with movement and often with sound. The slightest breeze will set their slender leaves and drooping flower heads into motion and cause gentle rustling sounds.

• The shapes and colours of their leaves give a excellent contrast to other features in the garden, to broad-leaved plants and their showy flowers or to the materials and textures of wood, stone, gravel, ceramics etc. that we may have in the garden.

The plants featured are recommended as they are reliable in most soils in most regions and are widely available.

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    Bamboos

A large and varied group of graceful grasses which contrary to popular belief are usually hardy and not invasive. In the main they are fairly slow growing. The length of the stems is connected to the extent of the root system. So if your young plant doesn't produce 8ft high canes immediately, give it a chance to establish.

Bamboos are evergreens and not affected by any major pest or disease in this country (there's little chance that panda's will start eating the emerging shoots). They are not always able to cope with exposed windy conditions which often makes them look a bit tatty and threadbare. they all prefer dampish conditions and won't really withstand being baked by the sun with little moisture available.

*Arundinaria nitida (also known as Sinarundinaria nitida or Fargesia nitida) - fountain bamboo, is a handsome one with dark purple-green canes and dark green leaves, to 15ft high by 5ft wide. Arundinaria murieliae (Sinarundinaria or Fargesia murieliae) - umbrella bamboo is similar but more, well, umbrella-shaped. Yellow-green canes at first turning yellow with age. Phyllostachys nigra - black bamboo is particularly striking with canes that start green but then turn black in the second or third year 10-15ft high by 6ft wide. 

Bamboos, particularly large specimens are not cheap but are fairly easily propagated by division when grown in containers, keep moving them on to bigger and bigger pots (i.e. the opposite to when they are grown in a container as their final home) which encourages them to spread, before taking them out and splitting into several plants.

* Bamboos have undergone a taxonomic review in recent years, meaning that their ancestry and relationships with other plant types has been update in the light of new evidence and discoveries. The knock on effect to this is that many bamboos have been renamed and are still often to be found as the same species under two totally different Latin names - such is the price of progress.

Growing tips and care

• Most grasses prefer a sunny position, coloured varieties produce their best colours in full sun, if too shady, they tend to go more to a mid-green colour.

• Once established, grasses tend to be trouble free. prepare the soil with organic matter before planting and look after them through the first summer. Thereafter they will need little care other than weeding.

• Cut down deciduous grasses in February (these are the ones that turn brown over the winter), this will encourage them to put on a spurt of growth come spring. New growth doesn't look so good when growing through old dead leaves. 

• Evergreen grasses shouldn't be cut back drastically as they can take a while to recover. In spring though old tatty leaves with damaged split ends can be trimmed back or removed to tidy the plant up. Also, remove old flowering spikes as they bend or fall over to make way for new.

Propagation

Grasses are generally straightforward to propagate, many can be propagated from seed and almost all can be propagated by division. If you want to make a display of a large number of grasses, such as in the pictures of Stipa arundinacea or Festuca ovina glauca on this page, then propagating will be essential unless you're very rich!

Seed;

• Stipa arundinacea    

• Festuca ovina glauca    

• Stipa tenuissima    

• Miscanthus sinensis hybrids (though not named varieties)

• Carex elata "Aurea" 

Buy grass seed from Thompson and Morgan

One of the oldest and best known of seed companies with an impressively wide range, visit their site and on-line catalogue.

Seed of Festuca ovina glauca will yield a mix of plants of various shades of blue, to select the best coloured ones, prick seedlings out into seed trays, about 15 in each and then be fairly ruthless about discarding the greener individuals to get the best coloured plants.

Division;

Of almost all types is successful. Dig them up when actively growing in spring or early summer and simply pull apart. They will separate at the naturally weakest region to give two plants with decent root systems. These can then be planted straight away. 

If you wish to build up stocks from container grown plants, then split the plant when the roots fill the pot, with one plant sepe4ating into 3 or 4 offspring, and re-pot, place them in a sunny position and make sure you water them well! This can be repeated as many times as necessary not forgetting a liquid feed, eventually place them in 2L pots and then plant them in the ground when they fill these. This will give you the quickest way to a good sized display of good sized plants.